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united nations environment program
Amid Carnage and Ecological Damage, Greenpeace Demands Gaza Cease-Fire
"We call for the bullets and bombs to be silenced so that the growing voices for peace can be heard," said the group.
Jun 19, 2024
As part of its quest for "a green and peaceful future," Greenpeace International on Tuesday urged the Israeli government and Hamas to "unequivocally agree to support and abide by" a recent United Nations Security Council resolution and declare "an immediate and permanent cease-fire" in the Gaza Strip.
"We call for the bullets and bombs to be silenced so that the growing voices for peace can be heard," the environmental advocacy group said in a statement that acknowledges "the horrific events" of October 7—in which Hamas-led militants killed more than 1,100 people in Israel and took around 240 hostages—and the over 37,000 Palestinians who Israeli forces have slaughtered since.
In addition to the rising death toll and at least 85,523 Palestinians injured by the war, "the majority of Gaza's 2.3 million people have been forced to flee their homes," Greenpeace highlighted. "Much of Gaza has been reduced to rubble, famine and disease are rife, nowhere and no one is safe. Sanity and humanity must be restored in the face of this unfolding genocide."
"Beyond the urgent need to end the civilian suffering and ecological devastation, all parties must resume peaceful negotiations."
The organization pointed to South Africa's genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice as well as a U.N. commission's report from last week that concludes the Israeli government and Palestinian militants have committed war crimes.
"We call on Hamas to immediately release all hostages," Greenpeace said. "We call for the Israeli government to immediately end the blockades on the supply of food, water, medicine, and fuel to the people of Gaza and release all illegally detained civilians."
"Violence is never the answer, it only brings more violence," the group emphasized. "Beyond the urgent need to end the civilian suffering and ecological devastation, all parties must resume peaceful negotiations towards a lasting peace built on safety, justice, and equal rights for all. International law must be upheld."
The United States and European countries that are arming Israel have faced international pressure to use their leverage to halt crimes by its forces. Greenpeace called for "a global embargo on all arms sales and transfers that could be used to further increase the toll of war crimes to be answered by both sides once this war and conflict ends."
"Greenpeace recognizes the deep historic roots that need to be discussed and negotiated if a permanent peace is to be established," the group said. "Greenpeace calls for an end to the illegal occupation of Palestine. Greenpeace supports the UNSC resolution ambition that 'Israel and Palestine live side by side in peace within secure and recognized borders, consistent with international law and relevant U.N. resolutions."
The Greenpeace statement was released the same day that the U.N. Environment Program (UNEP) published a preliminary assessment of the "environmental impact of the conflict in Gaza," which features three main sections. The first part addresses the state of the environment and natural resources in the Hamas-governed enclave before October 7.
The second section discusses topics including water, wastewater treatment, and sewage systems; solid waste collection and treatment; destruction of infrastructure and related debris; energy, fuel, and associated infrastructure; marine and coastal environments; terrestrial ecosystems, soil, and cultivated lands; and air pollution.
The third section focuses on chemicals and waste associated with armed conflicts as well as construction, destruction, and flooding of tunnels in Gaza—which, as the report notes, "is a small, densely populated coastal area, the environment of which has been affected by repeated escalations of the decadeslong conflict, unplanned urbanization, and population growth."
"We urgently need a cease-fire to save lives and restore the environment."
Inger Andersen, UNEP's executive director, said in a statement that "not only are the people of Gaza dealing with untold suffering from the ongoing war, the significant and growing environmental damage in Gaza risks locking its people into a painful, long recovery."
"While many questions remain regarding the exact type and quantity of contaminants affecting the environment in Gaza, people are already living with the consequences of conflict-related damage to environmental management systems and pollution today," she continued. "Water and sanitation have collapsed. Critical infrastructure continues to be decimated. Coastal areas, soil, and ecosystems have been severely impacted."
"All of this is deeply harming people's health, food security, and Gaza's resilience," Andersen added. "We urgently need a cease-fire to save lives and restore the environment, to enable Palestinians to start to recover from the conflict and rebuild their lives and livelihoods in Gaza."
The UNEP report and Greenpeace's statement followed a study that was posted to SSRN earlier this month and is currently under peer review. Ben Neimark, a co-author of the preprint and lecturer at Queen Mary University of London, said that "while the world's attention is rightly focused on the humanitarian catastrophe, the climate consequences of this conflict are also catastrophic."
As Common Dreams reported, Neimark's team estimated that up to 200,000 Gaza buildings were destroyed or damaged during just the first four months of the war, and the resulting climate costs were greater than the annual emissions of each of the world's 135 lowest-emitting countries.
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143 Fossil Fuel and Chemical Lobbyists Target Plastics Treaty Talks
"The fossil fuel and petrochemical industries are heavily resisting people- and planet-saving measures in the global plastics treaty. Their growing presence in the negotiations is very telling," said a Greenpeace campaigner.
Nov 15, 2023
Three days into the third round of negotiations for a global plastics treaty, an analysis revealed Wednesday that 143 fossil fuel and chemical lobbyists registered to attend the talks—heightening green groups' fears about nefarious industry influence over the final deal.
The third session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC-3) is scheduled to run through Sunday at the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) headquarters in Kenya. Building on previous meetings in Uruguay and France, this event is focused on "the so-called zero draft of the international legally binding instrument on plastic pollution, released earlier this year, with the goal of concluding negotiations by the end of 2024," according toU.N. News.
The Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL), which is behind the new lobbyist analysis, noted Wednesday that over the past year of talks, "civil society organizations and scientists have petitioned UNEP and the INC Secretariat to safeguard the negotiating process from industry influence and to implement strong conflict of interest policies."
Despite such demands, polluters' presence at the talks is increasing. Based on the UNEP's provisional list of INC-3 participants, CIEL found that there was a 36% rise in registered fossil fuel and chemical lobbyists from INC-2. Additionally, industry representatives outnumber the 70 smallest member state delegations at the Kenya meeting.
The group pointed out that its "estimate is likely to be conservative, as our methodology relies on delegates to the talks disclosing their own connections to fossil fuel or chemical industry interests, and many lobbyists may choose to obscure that link."
CIEL global petrochemicals campaign manager Delphine Lévi Alvarès compared polluters targeting the plastics treaty talks to similar behavior at annual U.N. climate summits—the next of which, COP28, kicks off in the United Arab Emirates this month.
"Time and time again, we have seen how industry influence has blocked substantive progress in environmental treaty negotiations, including in spaces like the climate COP," she said. "At INC-2, the Secretariat stated that there were 'not a lot of fossil fuel companies in the venue.' Our analysis shows that is simply not true—their presence is only increasing. We must course-correct immediately to ensure that the plastics treaty is grounded in science and does not become a fossil-fueled treaty."
The CIEL analysis is supported by groups including Greenpeace, whose head of delegation to the talks, Graham Forbes, said Wednesday that "the fossil fuel and petrochemical industries are heavily resisting people- and planet-saving measures in the global plastics treaty. Their growing presence in the negotiations is very telling."
"We urge U.N. member states to listen to the millions of people around the world who want an end to plastic pollution, rather than the fossil fuel lobby," declared Forbes, whose group has issued five detailed demands for the final agreement.
Greenpeace argues that the treaty must:
- End plastic pollution—from production to disposal—to protect the environment and human health;
- Set a legally binding target to reduce plastic production by at least 75% by 2040 to stay below 1.5° C;
- End single-use plastics, starting with the worst offending items;
- Ensure a just and inclusive transition to a low-carbon, zero-waste, reuse-based economy; and
- Be firmly rooted in a human rights-based approach that reduces inequality, prioritizes human health, and centers justice in its creation and implementation.
Other organizations supporting CIEL's analysis include Beyond Petrochemicals, Break Free from Plastic, and the International Pollutants Elimination Network (IPEN). Representatives from those groups also called for swift action to curb industry influence.
"Fossil fuel, chemicals, and plastics corporations are here en masse to ensure that they can exponentially increase toxic plastics production at the expense of our health and that of future generations," warned IPEN co-chair Pamela Miller. "We must have a strong, health-protective treaty that is based on independent science and free of these conflicts of interests."
Like Lévi Alvarès, Break Free from Plastic global coordinator Von Hernandez stressed that "this is not the first time that fossil fuel interests have tried to influence a process intended to check and curtail the pollution they have spawned and created."
"That they have descended in great numbers in Nairobi shows what and how much is at stake here," he added. "People and planet must come first—they cannot be left hostage to these predatory interests."
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Global Trade Protections Don't Cover 900+ At-Risk Plant, Animal Species
"Our work identifies hundreds of species—including 370 critically endangered and endangered species—in need of protections, and we also know data gaps mean the true figure could be much higher," said a study co-author.
Jul 11, 2023
New research identifying the hundreds of at-risk plant and animal species that lack international trade protections under a decades-old treaty led experts to call for key biodiversity-saving reforms on Tuesday.
The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) entered into force in 1975 and there are now 184 parties to the agreement, which currently protects nearly 41,000 species—including over 6,600 animals and 34,300 plants—from overexploitation.
"CITES listings should respond to the best available information on a species' status and be adopted where they will be likely to benefit the species," said University of Oxford research fellow Dan Challender, lead author of the analysis, in a Tuesday statement.
Challender worked with ecologists and wildlife trade experts at the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the United Nations Environment Program World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC), and the Zoological Society of London for the study, published last week in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution.
"CITES includes 59% (1,307 species), leaving two-fifths overlooked and in potential need of international trade regulation."
The paper explains that because "there is no established method to systemically determine which species are most at risk from international trade to information potential trade measures under CITES," the research team developed a mechanism using IUCN's Red List of Threatened Species, which includes assessments over 150,000 species.
"While our research shows CITES performs moderately well at identifying species in need of trade regulation, it also suggests that hundreds of species are overlooked," said Challender. "Cross-referencing data from the Red List with CITES listing information brings these potential protection gaps to light."
The team found that "of 38,245 globally threatened and near threatened species, 5.8% (2,211 species) are likely to be threatened by international trade." Of those at risk, "CITES includes 59% (1,307 species), leaving two-fifths overlooked and in potential need of international trade regulation." In other words, 904 species lack protections.
"Our work identifies hundreds of species—including 370 critically endangered and endangered species—in need of protections, and we also know data gaps mean the true figure could be much higher," noted study co-author Kelly Malsch of the UNEP-WCMC.
The endangered or critically endangered species that researchers said require safeguards from trade include 31 types of rays and sharks caught for fins and meat as well as 23 species of palm traded for horticulture.
Both Malsch and Challender expressed hope that the countries behind the treaty will use the new findings to inform future conference of the parties meetings. The next summit is scheduled for 2025.
"To achieve the aims of both CITES and the new Global Biodiversity Framework on tackling nature loss, it is vital that the international trade in animal and plant species is both sustainable and does not threaten the survival of the species in the wild," said Malsch, referencing an international plan agreed to in December. "We hope that CITES parties will be able to use our new methodology in future to ensure that CITES listings are based on the best available science."
The paper also points out that the number of species threatened by local and national resource depletion "is four times greater than species likely threatened by international trade," indicating the broader challenges faced by endangered plants and animals worldwide.
"To effectively address the overexploitation of species," the study stresses, "interventions focused on achieving sustainability in international trade need to be complemented by commensurate measures to ensure that local and national use and trade of wildlife is well-regulated and sustainable."
As Common Dreams reported in December, the Global Biodiversity Framework—whose overarching goal is protecting 30% of all land and water—did not alleviate fears about looming extinctions. While some U.N. and civil society leaders lauded the deal, others, particularly representatives of the Global South, sounded the alarm about corporate capture of protection efforts, promotion of agribusiness, and failures to adequately involve Indigenous peoples.
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